


try on all your nights

by alcatrazed



Series: (your hands, my mouth) [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Angry Sex, F/M, Female Steve Harrington, Lack of Communication, Mentions of choking, Minor Violence, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Summer Romance, Under-negotiated Kink, Unhealthy Relationships, Vaginal Fingering, basically billy and stevie spend a lot of time fucking when they should be talking about feelings, mild blood kink
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 16:05:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18854407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcatrazed/pseuds/alcatrazed
Summary: summer slipped us underneath her tongue —This summer, Billy thought, felt like it would never end. And then it did.— our days and nights are perfumed with obsession.





	try on all your nights

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags, these two are hella bad for each other. 
> 
> Title from ["Slide"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ee4QjCEHHc) by Calvin Harris. All quotes from ["The Louvre"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQkdwymDanE) by Lorde.

**PART I** :  
_a rush at the beginning_

 

 

 

 

 **I.**  
For the record: Billy Hargrove does not, in fact, like Stevie Harrington.

Stevie Harrington — with her long brown hair and her pouty mouth — Billy just always thought would probably be a good lay. A nasty, rough, good fuck, coloured in at the edges with red: red lines of scratches from the press of nails, red blood against the red of a bruised mouth, the red mark of the hard grip of hands.

Billy would put money on Stevie Harrington being a freak too. Girls like her, leggy, skin like honey, big eyes and big, batting eyelashes, are always hiding things like attitudes behind the veneer of it all. Attitudes, daddy issues and how much they want you to choke them.

At least, they do in Billy’s experience.

 

 

 **II.**  
The first time Billy gets his mouth on Stevie Harrington is at a party on the last day of school.

Billy’s not sure whose house this is. It’s a big house, must be some rich kid. There’s a porch out front and in the back and the neighbours live far enough away that no one is really worried about someone calling the cops. The photos whose eyes follow you when you walk up the stairs have both a girl in them, blonde hair pulled into pigtails and braces, and a boy, covered in freckles and just growing in his front teeth. The kitchen is a mess of empty bottles and cups and someone’s spilled punch on the floor and made it all sticky.

Billy wonders how whoever this place belongs to is gonna get all these people out of here. But it’s not really his problem, so he doesn’t really care.

Not when Stevie Harrington is here and her jean skirt is short and her mouth is bright pink with lip gloss. Lip gloss she leaves behind on the lip of her plastic red cup of shitty keg beer. Billy wants to push his thumb against the poutiest part of Stevie’s bottom lip and smear it, mess her up a little.

God, if he could just fuck her and get it out of his system.

They cross paths in the living room somewhere near 11PM, Stevie clicking her tongue and saying, “Billy.” Nancy Wheeler, standing right beside Stevie, makes it a point to ignore him.

“Harrington,” is all Billy offers in reply. Stevie smiles at him like she’s won, or something, and Billy’s not sure what the prize is. Later, Billy will think: maybe she had already tracked their trajectory then.

Maybe it was, at this moment, that Stevie Harrington realized Billy wanted to fuck her, and she decided to fuck him in return.

 

 

 **III.**  
They end up in the bathroom.

Billy had watched Stevie go in, finally detached from Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers’ side, counted, _one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand . . ._ and followed her in.

She hadn’t locked the door. Of course she hadn’t locked the door.

There was water all over the counter, spilled by drunk teenagers trying to wash up and people drinking water straight from the sink in their cupped hands. The carpet in front of the shower was grey and fuzzy. The whole room smelt like spice and fruit and Billy wondered if it was Stevie’s perfumes, or some other girls.

“Hargrove,” Stevie had rolled off her tongue, entirely unsurprised. Maybe unimpressed. An obvious mimic of Billy’s earlier use of her last name.

Outside, the party goes on. Someone clanks a pair of too full plastic cups together and spills beer all over him and his friend. Music plays, bass thumping. On the back porch a group of seniors, newly freed of high school and riding high before the fear of real life sets in. In the doorway that leads to the kitchen Nancy grabs Jonathan by his elbow and says into the shell of his ear, “have you seen Stevie?”

In the bathroom, Billy traps Stevie against the porcelain of the sink with his hips pressed against hers. She blinks at him, those big brown eyes, and her lips parts, that pouty pink mouth. The two of them are almost the same height. When Stevie shifts her legs apart, just so, it’s easy for Billy to take the opportunity to slide his thigh between them.

The truth is that this has been brewing between them for awhile. There’s only so many scathing quips that can be exchanged before you’re thinking of more productive ways to express those emotions.

Okay, maybe not productive. Maybe just a little more fun. Maybe just switching the gnashing of teeth around harsh words to your teeth bit into someone’s shoulder.

Just before Billy kisses Stevie, he takes his thumb and holds it against her mouth. It’s sticky like he imagined, but so soft and warm, and then Stevie’s teeth bite down on Billy’s thumb; not even a proper bite, just a graze of teeth. Billy splays his fingers across Stevie’s chin and jaw, grips and pulls her forward to kiss him.

The kiss is a mess. Billy is definitely drunk and he’s pretty sure Stevie is too. They’re all tongue and teeth against each other, wet and hot. Billy holds Stevie’s face with one hand and uses the other hand to hold her waist. In return, Stevie fists both hands into Billy’s leather jacket. Underneath it, his shirt only has three buttons done up. Suddenly, Billy feels unbearably hot. He wants to scratch himself out of his skin.

Stevie grinds herself down onto the thigh Billy has between her legs, the denim of her skirt catching against the denim of his jeans. Stevie lets out this little gasp, soft and pretty. Billy feels caught between the satisfaction of getting the noise from her and the dissatisfaction of wanting more and more. He gets Stevie sitting up on the sink, water soaking into her skirt, and spreads her legs wide enough for him to stand between. It makes Stevie’s skirt ride up even higher. exposing more pale thigh — territory formerly uncharted by Billy that he wants to put his mark on. An explorer claiming something that never really belonged to him.

He pushes Stevie’s legs further apart at the thighs. They won’t go any farther, but Billy keeps pushing against them with one hand anyway, wanting to leave imprints in the shape of his fingers. His other fingers find Stevie wet through her cotton panties, unsuspecting, innocent. Ruined. Billy pushes against the spot of wetness experimentally. It is not entirely purposeful, mostly superficial, and Billy really just wants to see Stevie’s face when he does it.

Stevie doesn’t disappoint: she sucks in a breath, catches it behind a bite in her lip, and let’s it out all at once, knuckles going white where they hang onto the edge of the sink. Billy does it again, just because he can, and then Stevie’s left hand is scrambling to undo the few buttons closed on Billy’s shirt. She doesn’t even take anything off, just pushes all the fabric aside to splays her hand, wide fingers and a flat palm, against Billy’s abs.

“Who would have guessed you’d get so wet for me?” Billy says. He leans his and Stevie’s foreheads together, mouths almost touching but not quite. He thinks about kissing her, but then he’d stifle any noises he’s about to get Stevie to make, so he reconsiders it.

Stevie drags her nails against the skin of Billy’s stomach. “You want a medal for it?” She challenges, breathless. Billy groans, quiet in the back of his throat, and then he’s pushing past the fabric of Stevie’s pnaties to get his fingers inside of her. The thumb Stevie had her teeth against is massaging her clit now and that’s a little funny, isn’t it? All that pink lip gloss is a mess now, too, smeared across both Stevie and Billy’s mouths. They’re still not kissing, though, not since the first instance. Stevie is still open-mouthed, breathing hard, riding Billy’s fingers as they fuck into her.

They don’t kiss again until Stevie comes. She says, _shit, shit, shit_ , under her breath. Her hips falter their slow, small movement rhythm against Billy’s hand, and she hauls BIlly forward by the back of his neck to cover his pleased smirk with her mouth.

 

 

 **IV.**  
They leave the bathroom at the same time. Stevie’s got this darkly blooming hickey just above the cut of her shirt, her skirt is messed with wet spots and she’s probably still wet between her thighs.

No one at the party is surprised.

Except maybe Tommy, who grabs hold of Billy’s jacket and hisses, “Stevie Harrington, really?” And the tone of his voice makes Billy think there’s something he’s missing here.

Billy shakes Tommy’s grip off of him. “Had to get it out of my system,” Billy says.

He’s not sure if that’s true or not.

 

 

 **V.**  
The next time Billy sees Stevie is at the Hawkins Community Pool.

Billy only goes because Max begs him to take her; all of her friends are going, she says, please, will he just drop her off and pick her up? And it works out for Billy that he ends up agreeing because Stevie Harrington apparently took a lifeguarding job this summer. She’s wearing this bright red bathing suit, the full length of her legs on display and already drinking up sunlight and going tan. She has a white t-shirt on, too. It says _LIFEGUARD_ in big bold letters on the front and back of it and Stevie’s tied it with a knot at the front so it hugs her frame better. Her skin looks slick with something: sunscreen, oil, sweat, and it reminds Billy of when he made her slick between her legs.

It’s been two weeks since the party. Summer has wrapped its arms around Hawkins in a tight embrace and won’t let go for months now. When Billy had gotten home he had found a roadmap of shallow scratches maring his stomach. He wonders if Stevie had found her own evidence of Billy on her thighs.

If she did, it’s long gone now.

Stevie manages to catch Billy just before he leaves. He also might have purposefully slow so she could catch him. Her hair is in a high ponytail on the very top of her head, tendrils of loose pieces falling around her face. The summer agrees with her. Billy could almost mistake her for a California girl, if not for the small town look in everything about her otherwise.

“Hey,” Stevie says, almost shy. Almost as if she hadn’t left the bathroom door unlocked that night.

“You here all day?” Billy asks. It’s a safer question then, _what time do you finish?_. There’s no nuance in that kind of question, no subtlety.

Stevie shakes her head. “I’m off at five.” Billy quirks and eyebrow, says nothing. Stevie keeps talking. “My parents aren’t home,” she says and neither of them notice the way Billy’s finger twitch. “Big house at the end of the street. You’ll know it when you see it.”

 

 

 **VI.**  
Stevie steals a bottle of rosé from her parents liquor cabinet.

“They think I don’t know where they keep the key,” she says, smiling as she returns said key to it’s hidden spot above the microwave. “As if they would even notice that we drank it from it anyway. No one is more oblivious then my parents.” She punctuates her sentence by taking a swig, straight from the bottle.

It’s odd; the dichotomy of who Stevie is when she knows the whole world is watching and who Stevie is when she knows they aren’t. If someone had told Billy Hargrove on the last day of school that two weeks from then, he would be standing in Stevie Harrington’s kitchen, watching her wince around a swallow of alcohol — well, Billy doesn’t imagine any reality where he would have believed it.

But here he was, and here she was. Apparently not yet out of Billy’s system.

“What’s with you and Tommy?” Billy asks. He is good at nuance when he wants to be. When he has no use for it he doesn’t see the point.

Stevie looks confused, for just a moment, before her face gives her away and shows her realization. And then she masks it all with annoyance, “what do you care?”

“I don’t care,” Billy replies. He peels Stevie’s fingers away from the bottle of rosé one by one before he’s lifting it to his mouth to drink some himself. It feels warm and sweet going down his throat. He wonders if Stevie’s mouth would taste the same right now. “I’m just curious.”

Stevie rolls her eyes at him. Her arms are folded together now and her nails are painted pink. “It doesn’t matter,” she insists.

“Your face when I asked,” Billy smirks, running a finger to smooth out the curved lines of wrinkles in the folded expression of Stevie’s forehead. “Tells me it kind of does matter.”

Stevie pulls away from the press of Billy’s finger. “Are you just gonna bother me about Tommy,” she asks, “or are you gonna fuck me?”

And damn, if Stevie Harrington isn’t a girl who knows how to get what she wants.

 

 

 **VII.**  
Billy likes fucking in bathrooms at parties. He likes the rush of it, being behind the locked door in a house full of people, trying to pull apart the necessary parts of your clothes to give way to skin; never all of it, only ever just enough.

The truth is, though, that there’s just something nice about fucking in a bed.

Especially when that bed is the big bed in Stevie Harrington’s room. A queen-size four poster bed with the nicest sheets Billy’s ever felt, smelling freshly washed, and the softest pillows Billy is sure money can buy. If Billy knew fucking Stevie Harrington would put him squarely in the lap of luxury like this, he might have done it sooner.

Stevie smells like chlorine and grass and sunshine. Billy’s got his nose where her neck meets her shoulder, biting at the skin there while he rolls his hips into her. Stevie has her hands in his hair, pulling at it while she lets out these little gasps and moans. Billy wants to put her legs over his shoulders, but that would mean pulling out of her; maybe they’ll save that for another time. There’s more things he wants to do _another time_ too. Want to get his tongue in Stevie, wants to taste how wet she always is for him. Wants to warm her up, slow like melted honey, in a way that spreads through her until she’s writhing against him. He wants to get her on top of him and riding his dick, all her skin on display for him to touch. He wants to bend her over and fuck her from behind, grab her hair, pull her back against him with his hands on her hips.

But for now he’ll settle for making Stevie come while he’s fucking into her, before pulling out and finishing onto her stomach. For now, he’ll settle for running his index finger through the mess he’s left against her skin, sliding the finger past her lips, pressing it against her tongue, and watching Stevie suck it clean.

That’ll do it, Billy supposes.

For now.

 

 

 **VIII.**  
Billy sticks around for a little bit.

Stevie all but drapes herself over him when he rolls off of her. They kick the blankets away; even with the air conditioning in Stevie’s house it’s too hot for them. When Stevie settles onto Billy’s chest she pushes one of her legs between both of his. Her stomach is still sticky against Billy’s side.

On the wall there’s a hook rack Stevie’s parents must have had made for her, dusty pink letters that spell out her name. Right now it holds up two sweaters and a set of keys.

“Why’d your parents name you Stevie?” Billy asks, confident that there’s an answer. He doesn’t know why his parents called him William. His mom never said anything about it and his dad never will — but rich people care about shit like that. Billy would put ten bucks on Stevie’s dad having a long, weighty name like _Richard Michael Wentworth Harrington The Third_ , or some other stupid shit.

“They didn’t,” Stevie says. “My name is Stephanie.”

“ _Stephanie_ ,” Billy parrots, rolling the name around on his tongue.

Stevie pinches his side. “Don’t get any ideas,” she warns, “nobody calls me that. Not even my parents.”

 

 

 

 **IX.**  
Billy stays until Stevie falls asleep.

 

 

 **X.**  
They fall into a routine after that. Billy feels like maybe he should be embarrassed about how he just goes for it, _hook, line, sinker_ , but he can’t bring himself to really care. Stevie’s parents are gone for the summer, she tells him, and Stevie has her big house with all this liquor no one is drinking and a pool, and when she isn’t working she doesn’t have much else to do.

Billy learns there’s not much else to do during the summer in a small town besides fuck.

(“What about your friends?” Billy had asked.

“Nancy and Jonathan?” Stevie had shook her head, sighed. “They’re kind of obsessed with each other right now. Ever since they finally got together. I doubt they even notice I’m not around.”)

It ends up like this: Stevie spends the day at the pool, swallowing sun rays with a pair of sunglasses perched on her nose. Billy spends a lot of time burning gas by driving around with nowhere to go. Summer turns the sky into a road, in a way that Billy could seemingly drive forever and never get anywhere. He’s always felt that way about summer: the stretch of it seemingly endless until the ending sneaks up on you. By mid-June Hawkins is sweltering hot every day of the week and the perpetual sheen of sweat that makes Billy sticky from head to toe makes him restless. But it also makes him tired. Staying up late with Stevie most nights doesn’t help.

The days Billy’s not driving around trying not to watch the clock, he’s waking up at noon and lying, almost naked safe for boxers, in his bed on top of the covers until 5PM.

Then Billy drives to the pool to meet up with Stevie, and most days he’ll stop at the gas station for a soda and some condoms.

(Stevie was letting Billy fuck her without them for awhile. California girls would have never let Billy do that, not with all the people that filtered in and out of that State. Couldn’t be too careful. But Hawkins was small, a town where everybody knows everybody, so Stevie had let him. Maybe she didn’t really understand the severity of that. At least, she hadn’t until her period had been a week late, a close call. Stevie had said, “the last thing I want is to have your fucking baby, Hargrove,” with a finger pushed against his sternum, accusingly, and has insisted Billy wear a condom if he wanted to fuck her ever since.)

The condensation on the soda gets all over Billy’s hands, turning them damp and chilled. When Stevie climbs into the passenger side of Billy’s car and he puts his hand on her leg, the displayed skin Billy knows well now, Stevie always complains. And maybe she jerks a little under Billy’s grip, maybe she shivers, but she never pushes the hand away.

Sometimes they’ll go straight to Stevie’s house after Billy picks her up, sometimes they don’t even make it there. There was this one time where Billy had pulled up to a stop sign and Stevie had put her hand on him through his pants, fingers kneading just slightly until Billy’s cock took notice. He considered pulling over — it wouldn’t be the first time or last time they’d fuck in Billy’s car — but Stevie hadn’t let him. Hadn’t even let him properly consider it before she was pulling Billy free of his pants and putting her mouth on him. Through his boxers, first, while Billy was driving down an empty street, and then, gloriously, wet mouth heat against the heat of Billy’s skin.

It was almost perfect: Billy’s always been someone who flirts at the apex of pleasure and danger, except for the fact that Stevie didn’t let him come. Not until they were in her house, not even a care to turn any lights on.

Stevie and Billy on the couch, in the dark, Billy finally getting to come.

After that, Billy flipped them, pushing Stevie back into the pillows on her couch, and kissed her. Mouth still against hers, he said, “You gonna let me eat you out?” and Stevie didn’t answer, not verbally. Just whined and pushed her body up against Billy’s and that was answer enough.  
Billy spent close to an hour going down on Stevie in revenge for the earlier teasing. Shifting focus from her clit, to her cunt, to her thighs. He managed to suck an obscene hickey onto a high point of her inner thigh, hidden but not quite, before she pulled on his hair and told him he couldn’t do that, not with her on lifeguard duty tomorrow.

“Too late,” Billy had smirked and then, finally, with two fingers inside of her and his mouth against her clit, Stevie got to come too.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 **PART II** :  
_you’re the one to blame, all that you’re doing_

 

 

 

 

 **XI.**  
It takes a few days after that for Billy to say fuck it and just start hanging out at the pool. Billy can’t seem to really give a shit about the preamble that sets up for them. Max is his excuse to be around, technically, but anyone who knows better could probably guess otherwise.

There was this weird look Max gave him when he dragged her out of the house to drop her off in his own bathing suit, clutching a half-empty bottle of sunscreen, but Billy pretended he didn’t notice.

Billy spends most of his time lounging on the community provided beach chairs, uncomfortable as they are, peeling paint and squeaky plastic. His swim shorts are almost indecent and his sunglasses are tinted dark, so he can stare unabashedly at Stevie with his eyes hidden behind the black of them.

Today she’s wearing a blue bathing suit; Billy can’t stop thinking about how he knows what her tan lines look like underneath of it. The soft cut from Stevie’s sun-worn legs and chest to the pale center of her stomach, her tits, between her legs. Like a candy that’s been unwrapped.

On her break for lunch, Stevie plants herself on the far end of the chair Billy is already sitting on. It’s a bold move. They don’t really do the in public thing. Billy would say _it’s not on purpose_ if someone asked him about it, but that might be a lie. Just because Billy doesn’t really care if people talk doesn’t mean he wants to give them a reason to.

(There’s something to preserving this thing they’re doing to just themselves, though. Billy doesn’t want to unpack that. Not right now. But he thinks, probably, there’s something to it.)

But still: after Stevie sits, Billy presses his foot to the side of her thigh, just to feel her and feel the heat of her skin against him. She’s been sitting in the sun all day so far, and so she may well be as hot as asphalt on a day like this. She pushes BIlly away, halfheartedly.

“Careful,” Billy smirks. He pulls his sunglasses down his nose a little, looking at Stevie over the frame of them. “People see a good girl like you hanging around a bad guy like me,” and then he clicks his tongue instead of finishing his sentence, the rest of it all implied with a _tut, tut, tut._

Stevie rolls her eyes. “People probably see your car parked outside of my house every night,” she says, “by now I don’t think anyone thinks I’m very _good_.” She curls the last word off her tongue like a challenge, returning Billy’s smirk.

And, yeah, okay. Billy never deluded himself into thinking he and Stevie existed in this bubble. But it was easy to pretend they did. Something to do with the summer; the heat, the days that seemed to go on forever, endless like the whole universe is. The weirdness of Stevie’s house, caught in this time capsule of a family who is gone and never comes home, who may as well not exist.

The only people in this town who don’t know anything about Stevie and Billy is probably just Stevie’s own parent. And that’s their own willful fucking ignorance.

(Billy doesn’t want to unpack that. Not today. So, instead —)

Billy says, “do you think they hear the noises coming from your house every night too?” He takes his foot and pushes the heel of it against the darkening, purple and red hickey on Stevie’s upper thigh, the one Billy left there just days ago. Like it’s a button that’ll remind her.

It’s on full display in her bathing suit. Stevie goes red when Billy speaks, pushes against it, feels the light sting of pain. Billy feels excitement bubble in his chest.

Stevie is not gentle when she pushes both of Billy’s legs all of the way off of his chair this time.

 

 

 **XII.**  
“I always wanted a sibling, did you know that?” Stevie says, dripping water in droplets on the concrete around her pool. She and Billy had just spent about twenty minutes making out half-submerged in the chlorinated water of the pool in Stevie’s backyard. Billy’s kind of half-hard, at this point, but Stevie has decided it’s time to talk. “An older brother, actually.”

Billy shakes the dampness out of his hair. Stevie left a hickey on his collarbone about five minutes ago and he can still feel it throbbing. “If you had an older brother,” Billy hums, “he wouldn’t like me.”

Stevie laughs. “You’re probably right,” she replies, “but, I mean, I’m sure my dad would be much happier if he had a boy before he had me.”

“Is your dad —”

“Like that? Not really. Well, no. He is like that, he’s just not that obvious about it.” Stevie explains, “I know he’s disappointed I’m a girl. And I know he’s disappointed my mom couldn’t have anymore kids after me. He would never say it out loud. But he doesn’t really need to.”

Stevie says it so nonchalantly, like this is just another thing that happens to her, predetermined and unable to change. Death and taxes. Death and taxes and a dad who’s disappointed he only ever had one kid and she was a girl.

 _I don’t think I make my dad very proud, either._ Billy considers saying. He doesn’t know what good that would do, though. So after a pregnant pause he pinches Stevie’s thigh to make her squeak. Then he’s swallowing the noise with his own mouth, leaning her back against one of the Harrington’s patio chairs, and taking her apart.

 

 

 **XIII.**  
When Billy lived in California, the grocery store down the street and on the opposite corner always had the nicest peaches. As if they were somehow always in season. Peaches in Hawkins were never as good; they were never made of the same kind of supple skin, never quite as easy to tear into with your teeth. Never, ever as juicy.

Billy finds compensation in Stevie. He touches her soft, warm skin as much as he can. Sinks his teeth into parts of her, hard enough to bruise. And she drips juice the way one of those peaches would, only it’s between the frame of her legs.

Billy says, “I could eat you out forever,” settled between that frame. He’s got one of Stevie’s legs over his shoulder and he licks and nibbles against the thigh that’s just next to his face. Stevie’s legs flex at his words, toes curling. “You always get so fucking wet for me,” he keeps going, running a finger along Stevie’s slit, where she’s dripping in it. Dripping in it for Billy. “And you taste so good. I could go down on you forever and I’d never be hungry again.”

“Why don’t do you do it, then?” Stevie asks, digging her heel into Billy’s back, impatient and desperate to come. She’s red all over her chest, creeping up her neck and splotched across her cheeks. Outside, the moon breathes out stars against a clear sky, and Hawkins is quiet and cool and unassuming. Stevie radiates light and warmth even in the dark of her home. It really is like she’s absorbing the sun she sits in every day and now, in the absence of it, does her best to make up for it. Summer contained in tanned skin, Billy thinks. Smells of it, radiates it out, breathes it in and filters it out even more potent. Plants could grow in the light of her and sometimes when Billy touches her, gently with just the tips of his fingers, she feels the way grass does underneath your feet.

Somewhere in Europe, Stevie’s parents are probably eating lunch at some expensive restaurant, not even a second thought about their daughter.

That’s okay, though. Billy’s right here.

“Oh?” Billy quirks an eyebrow. “I should just eat you out forever? Getting you all worked up, my tongue in you, forever? Never letting you come? Just so I can have my mouth on you forever?”

Stevie whines, “that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” The frustration radiating off of Stevie is palpable, but so is her arousal, and they both taste as good as her cunt does.

“ _Please,_ ” Stevie whines again, the last half of the word stolen from her throat, coming out half-choked.

Billy relents.

 

 

 **XIV.**  
Neil stops Billy one night on his way out of the house.

“You seeing a girl?” He asks. His tone is accusatory. Billy hasn’t even done anything wrong.

Billy shrugs.

Susan, from her spot on the couch, turns to Billy to say, “if you are,” with a soft smile that Billy almost can’t the sight of, “we’d love to meet her.”

There’s not a single thing Billy can think that he’d rather do less.

 

 

 **XV.**  
“What’s your favourite colour?” Stevie asks. It’s midday on a Wednesday. The night time has wrapped it’s ropes around the sun and is pulling it down, just half of it still peaking over the horizon. It casts an orange glow over everything.

Stevie’s sitting in Billy’s passenger seat. She’s got this bright red lollipop she nicked from the lifeguards office after her shift at the pool today. It matches the bathing suit Billy saw her wearing that first day he found her at work. It matches her top too, a thin little red t-shirt tucked into her shorts. Her feet are up on Billy’s dash, with her knees folded, and she’s taken off her sandals and left them on the floor.

“Red,” Billy says, tongue coming out to wet his lip. “Red, probably.”

Stevie hums around her lollipop. It clicks against her teeth when she pulls it from her mouth. “What do you think mine is?”

Billy considers for a moment. Then he says, “pink. Princesses like pink.”

And Stevie always paints her fingernails pink. Half the things in her room are pink. The only colour of underwear Billy ever takes off of her are black, grey and pink.

“Blue, actually.” Stevie corrects him, voice smug. “Probably blue.” Billy casts her an incredulous look as he rolls to a brief stop at a stop sign. “The pink is just like -- I told you my dad probably wanted me to be a boy. So the pink is to like, remind him I’m a fucking girl. And I don’t give a fuck if he wanted a boy.”

“You got daddy issues, Harrington?”

“What do you think?” Stevie’s tone is playful and mischievous and she reaches over to take one of Billy’s hands off the wheel and onto her leg.

The bare skin under Billy’s fingers is warm, smooth. Stevie’s placed Billy’s hand about  
mid-thigh, so he slides it higher just to feel her lean into the touch. Billy thinks about that first party, when he thought a lot of things about Stevie Harrington. Some things that have turned out to be true and some other things he never could have anticipated.

He thinks of a time when he thought Stevie Harrington was like all the other girls.

After Billy pulls into the empty driveway at Stevie’s house, his hand a firm presence on her thigh the whole rest of the ride, Billy pushes his fingers into Stevie’s hair, hauls her forward and kisses her hard and deep.

When she sinks her teeth into Billy’s bottom lip and pulls, Billy thinks he probably got a lot of things wrong about Stevie Harrington.

 

 

 **XVI.**  
They go the same party. Separately.

Stevie shows up with Nancy Wheeler and, at the beginning of the summer, Billy would have laughed at how they both looked like twin cinemas of innocence, two Hawkins princesses with their pretty eyelashes and their pretty mouths. But now Billy knows better.

The keg beer is old, Billy can taste it. It’s sour in his mouth and sour going his throat and settles sour in his stomach. He keeps drinking it. Eventually you get to a point where you stop tasting it at all. Billy likes that part.

Billy watches Stevie from across the room, drinking bright red punch mixed with vodka and laughing at something Nancy whispers into her ear. She’s wearing this soft looking brown leather jacket, a white button up shirt underneath, a pair of denim shorts. It’s so different from the outfit she wore on the last day of school; like she’s miles away from high school, now, and it’s made her someone different. Even though that makes no sense. Even though that gives Billy way too much credit, as if he had some hand in those changes.

The night wanes. The house goes from full, overheated air and the constant buzz of noise, to half-full. People start going into the backyard for fresh air and to smoke weed. Start finding an empty room to hook up in. Start leaving.

It’s nearly 1AM and Billy is drunk, almost stumbling drunk, when he catches a conversation happening in the kitchen from just outside the doorway.

“Been hanging around Hargrove a lot this summer, haven’t you, Harrington?” It’s Tommy’s voice. Billy stiffens at the mention of Stevie’s name. It’s Tommy and he’s talking to Stevie.

“So what if I am?” Billy hears Stevie say. He can picture her right now: hands on her hips, eyebrow raised, mouth pursed, maybe upturned at the corner. “Not like I really care what you think about it, Tommy. Not really like there’s anything you can do about it.”

When Tommy speaks again he sounds angry. “Really, Stevie?” Something about the way Tommy says her name has Billy balling up his fists at his side. Clenching until his knuckles go white. “Did you tell him about us?”

Billy frowns. “There’s no _us_ ,” he hears Stevie retort.

“Doesn’t mean there’s nothing to tell.”

“Tommy,” Billy can hear the anger as it mounts in Stevie’s voice. Anger and — something else. Pain, maybe, something that hurts her. “I need you to leave me the fuck alone.”

But Tommy, of course Tommy doesn’t leave her the fuck alone. When has Tommy ever known how to do what’s good for him? “I’ve heard stories about him, y’know? Hargrove. People talk. Especially when you’ve been with as many girls as he has.” Tommy’s lowered his voice, probably thinks he’s being quieter than he actually is. Still, with the sounds of the party around him, Billy has to _listen_ to really be able to hear him. “I hear he likes it rough. Likes to pull a girls hair, like to get his hand around their throats. I heard he likes to fuck girls from behind so he doesn’t have to look at their faces. He do that shit with you, Stevie? Didn’t think you were that kind of girl. You like that kind of stuff?”

Billy’s seeing red. Before he can even think better of it, brain all messed up with beer and anger, he’s rounding the corner and stepping into the kitchen.

The hand Tommy has gripping Stevie’s elbow drops as soon as he sees Billy. But he doesn’t even seem the slightest bit deterred. He smirks, what a fucking ugly smirk, and says, “well, loo who it is.”

The room feels charged with electricity. Feels the way the air does the night before a thunderstorm.

“Billy -” Steve starts, but Billy cuts her off.

“You’ve got something to say, Tommy?” Billy’s not up in his face yet, but he’s about to be. Less than arm’s length away, chest puffed up, face hard and angry.

“You here to save your girlfriend, Hargrove?” Tommy keeps running his stupid fucking mouth. What kind of mother did he have that she never taught me how to _shut the fuck up_. “You think you’re the Harrington Princesses knight in shining armor?”

Billy takes a step forward. “Billy,” Stevie says again, but this time she reaches a hand out and puts it on Billy’s chest to push him back. “You’re drunk.”

“You’re just going to let someone talk to you like that?” Billy snaps. Stevie pulls her hand off of him like all the electricity in the room just pushed her away from Billy with a shock. Fuck. Billy didn’t mean it like that.

“I don’t give a fuck how he talks to me,” Stevie bites back. Venom leaks from her; in her words, her eyes and her expression. The way she folds her arms across her chest and closes off her body. From Tommy, from _Billy_. “Because I don’t give a fuck about him.”

“Listen to your girlfriend, Hargrove.” Tommy keeps fucking _talking_.

“Shut the fuck _up_ , Tommy,” Stevie grits out between clenched teeth, the muscles in her jaw are so tight. “Or I’ll fuck you up myself.” Billy is so drunk, he’s just realizing now how drunk he really is, so he has to be forgiven for getting caught on the idea of Stevie fucking up Tommy’s shitty face a little bit and how hot that would be. “I’m leaving,” Stevie rolls her neck and sighs. “If you two want to keep measuring your dicks in here, be my guest.”

And, okay, so Billy can be an idiot sometimes. Can be a hot head, can be bad at listening. And, yeah, he’s drunk right now — but he knows what Stevie means when she says that. She wants Billy to let it go and leave too. She doesn’t want him to stand here and entertain Tommy. And, god, fuck, BIlly really doesn’t want to upset her, especially when she’s already kind of pissed at him.

So when Stevie turns and marches out of the kitchen, heels clicking against the floor, Billy turns to follow her.

He imagines, briefly, how this would go if he knew better: he’d follow Stevie right out the front door, he’d follow her into his car, let her drive them home, get his mouth on her mouth, her skin.

A pang of guilt hits Billy suddenly, right in his chest. His brain repeats Tommy saying shit about how many girls he’d been with, how he likes to fuck them. And, yeah, Stevie knew all of that shit already — but, Billy is suddenly aware, he doesn’t want her to misunderstand things here. Then Billy thinks _misunderstand what_ , thinks _why do you even feel bad about thinking about fucking her_.

His brain is buzzing and Billy, really, he’s just about to go looking for answers to all the questions in there, when Tommy has to open his stupid fucking mouth one more time.

“You know she’s my sloppy seconds, right, Hargrove?”

The best thing to ever come out of Tommy’s fucking mouth is the splatter of blood that sprays from it when Billy punches him right across the jaw.

 

 

 **XVII.**  
Stevie is so fucking mad at him. She has this red colouring to the high points of her cheeks, like a sunburn, and her jaw keeps flexing. Billy can see the muscles moving beneath her skin. Her mouth is downturned at each corner into the slightest frown. The biggest giveaway might be the fingers she holds a medical bandage against the cut on Billy’s nose with: not even the littlest bit gentle when they press, white knuckled, trying to stem bleeding.

“God,” Stevie says. She has pieces of hair falling into her eyes and her breath still smells like the sticky red spiked punch she was drinking. “You’re so fucking stupid. The both of you are.” She tells Billy, mouth like a piece of candy.

Tommy had hit Billy after Billy had hit him, and while Billy’s fist had connected with jaw and cheek, had Tommy biting down on his tongue by accident and spitting blood, Tommy had gone for Billy’s nose.

Stevie was pulling Billy away with a hand on his elbow before he could even properly react to the punch. And then they were halfway to Stevie’s house, with Stevie driving Billy’s car, before Billy even noticed that his nose was bleeding and he was getting it all over his shirt.

Now they’re in Stevie’s kitchen and Billy’s nose itself has stopped bleeding but the cut Tommy made across the bridge of his nose still is and his chest and shirt are still covered in a mess of red matter.

“You just wanna let people talk about you like that?”

“Billy,” Stevie shakes her head. “When I said I don’t give a fuck about what Tommy thinks of me, I meant it. He’s just annoying. I can handle annoying.”

Billy sniffs and his whole mouth tastes like blood, the hard metal tang of it. He just wants Stevie to _get it_. She can’t make those exceptions for anyone. She makes those exceptions for one person and then it becomes more than one person, and all of a sudden everyone is going to have some kind of shit to say about her. And she doesn’t deserve that.

Billy’s head is all fucked up; he’s still kind of drunk, can feel the buzz of it in his veins, and he’s just been fucking punched, rattled his brain around in the cage of his skull a little. And he doesn’t understand why Stevie is so angry at him, why she doesn’t _get it_.

So he does probably the stupidest thing he could. “What did he mean,” he asks and he’s watching Stevie’s eyes watch the cut on his face. Billy’s still covered in his own blood, drying and going itchy. “What did Tommy - about you and -” he doesn’t want to say the words because they’re fuking gross and ugly. Billy’s not that stupid.

Almost that stupid, but not quite.

Stevie stills. Like, all of her goes pin straight, muscles and bones, eyes and expression and mouth. Then she says, “no.” Repeats herself, “no, fuck you, you’re not doing this right now. You’re not making this about ways I fucked up. We’re talking about how you fucked up.”

Fuck, if _ways that I fucked up_ wasn’t the worst thing to say to get Billy uninterested in the answer.

“I just think I have a right -”

Stevie cuts Billy off, dripping anger out of her very pores, spitting it out from between her teeth. The kind of anger that comes from a deep part of you, like your stomach, gnashing it’s way out of your throat. “Shut up,” she says, “I don’t owe you _shit_ , Billy. You’re in my house and I’m trying to clean up all the blood on your face that’s there because you don’t know how to walk away. And you want to tell me what you’re _owed_? Fuck you.”

Shit, Billy didn’t mean it like that. It’s just so easy, with his head all fuzzy and Stevie’s fingers on his face like she almost cares, to forget this doesn’t technically mean anything.

“I didn’t,” Billy says lamely. His mouth can’t form any other words. Even if he had any idea what to say he doesn’t think he could say it.

“Just,” Stevie sighs. “Just drop it, okay? Leave it alone.”

Billy has never been very good at leaving things alone. In a week, he’ll probably pick at the scab on his nose until it bleeds again. But he can’t do this, he can’t argue with Stevie anymore.

Earlier she was mad at Tommy and now she’s just mad at Billy. Because she doesn’t give a fuck about Tommy.

It’s the second worst idea he’s had all night but Billy thinks _fuck it_ and grabs Stevie’s wrist to pull her towards him so he can kiss her.

Billy half expects her to immediately pull away. Maybe slap him right across the face for good measure. Maybe tell him to get the fuck out. Billy’s fucked up, she’s thinking right now, Billy guesses, Billy’s so fucked up for wanting to kiss me right now. _I don’t know how to put out fires_ , Billy wants to say but Stevie hasn’t said anything out loud, so he’d be talking to himself.

Maybe Stevie’s fucked up just like Billy is, though, because she doesn’t pull away from Billy, doesn’t push him off of her. Billy’s still got a messy map of blood all over his face, his chin, his chest and Stevie lets him kiss her. Kisses him back.

“I’m still mad at you,” Stevie mumbles against Billy’s mouth and then she bites Billy’s bottom lip and pulls at his hair at the same time to punctuate her words. Billy grunts and his cock twitches in his jeans.

Things get rougher as they go: Stevie kicks her legs up around Billy’s waist, crossing her ankles behind his back. Billy’s palming Stevie’s ass shamelessly as he moves his hands to hold her up by her thighs. When they get there Billy grips harder than he needs to, possessive.

They keep biting and scratching at each other. Billy considers telling Stevie to hit him, slap him right across his face. He deserves it, he wants to tell her, and if his cock aches at just the thought of it - well, that’s just a side effect. A lucky coincidence.

Billy doesn’t say anything, though. The whole encounter is already a tightrope walk of push and pull and one step too far might crack the glass house they’ve built around them.

Some of the blood on Billy’s face is still wet and it’s smearing against his and Stevie’s face, painting them in matching gore. Pale skin flushed red underneath the harsher red of Billy’s blood. Billy is caught halfway between wanting to wipe it away, to preserve an innocence that is maybe already gone, and wanting to make the stain of it worse, push himself into Stevie deeper than the places he’s already been.

Then Stevie is licking a stripe up Billy’s face, long and slow, like the way she sucks his dick. Her tongue comes away red with Billy’s blood, already stained from fruit punch, and god, if that isn’t the nastiest shit Billy’s ever seen. He knows Stevie can feel his dick hard against her thigh, even if it’s still in his jeans.

“Fuck,” Billy breathes out and when he kisses Stevie she tastes exactly like him. “You’re so fucking hot,” and Billy means it. He means it more than he ever has before.

“Yeah?” Stevie replies. Her voice is empty of coyness, of any shyness, of even any faux _oh, you mean me?_ Her voice is hard and sure. Complete control with an edge to it.

Billy knows this is the worst way for this night to end, the two of them fucking angry and broken apart in Stevie’s kitchen but he can’t make it stop and doesn’t want to. Life is about the ebbs and flows. Life is about reaping what you sow. And so they’re sowing this here, right now, and BIlly will deal with the consequences of reaping it later.

For now, he hauls Stevie up onto her kitchen counter, getting her jeans all the way off her legs and tossing them aside. Then Billy’s on his knees, working his way up Stevie’s legs from ankle to thigh with licks, bites, sucks. As he scales Stevie’s legs he simultaneously settles himself between them, spreading them so by the time he’s kissing the jut of Stevie’s hipbone her legs almost frame his waist again. She’s still wearing underwear, little grey cotton panties, a wet spot already forming on them. Billy puts his tongue on it, laves for a second, relishing in Stevie’s hands in hair, tugging once again, and the harsh gasp she makes when he does. He’s licking from the wet spot of cloth all the way to the band of her underwear, next, and biting at the elastic there, no care for if his teeth knick the delicate skin near it.

Stevie’s still got Billy’s blood smeared across the corner of her mouth and along her cheek while he eats her out.

When he fucks her, rough and hard against the kitchen counter, he pushes his thumb against the mess of it and smears it more, until it’s on Stevie’s chin and jaw and lips. She opens her mouth against his thumb when he touches her there, biting on it like she did what feels like a lifetime ago. Only now she bites hard, with intent.

Everything about the night bleeds with hurt around them, like an open wound. Billy’s not sure if he just didn’t manage to find a band-aid for it, or if he decided to throw of all the bandages out.

Maybe if they do this long enough — Billy gripping Stevie’s hips hard enough to bruise with one hand and the other splayed across her throat, fucking her in short, fast, rough strokes — maybe if they keep at this long enough they’ll both bleed out.

 

 

 

 **XVIII.**  
Later, in the shower, Billy counts every single one of the marks he left on Stevie with his mouth. Then the ones he left with his fingers. He counts her wet eyelashes, her ribs, the freckles that dot her shoulders from being out in the sun so much.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Stevie says. She looks tired. The hot water from the shower has soaked her hair and cleaned her face.

“Like what?” Billy asks.

“You know how,” is all Stevie offers as an answer.

 

 

 **XIX.**  
Billy expects things to change.

He and Stevie are a string cut and tied back together. A minimal difference, sure, but everything’s just a little shorter and where they’ve tied the knot back between them there’s a kink.

But nothing changes. They don’t talk about it and the summer nights go on.

(They shouldn’t just let it lie like that and they know it. _Forgive and forget_ , that’s the saying, right? Only no one’s been forgiven and they haven’t forgotten a thing.)

The TV buzzes with static in Stevie’s big empty house. Almost all the lights are off, the electric blue of the TV and low, faraway yellow light turned on in the bathroom are the only things that keep Stevie from being completely shrouded in darkness, head in Billy’s lap and fast sleep.

Moment like these feel severed from the rest of the world; as if Billy and Stevie have been carved from the very fabric of reality and the world exists without them and nobody notices that they’ve gone. In moments like this Billy can think things like _I’m going to ruin you_ in a way that makes his chest ache and he can pretend it doesn’t matter. Can think about how badly it’s going to hurt when this summer ends and his grasp on Stevie slips right through his fingers and she walks away from him without looking back. He can trick himself into thinking those things, right now, in these moments, don’t matter to the world outside of them. Like a time capsule, buried and then forgotten for as long as possible.

There’s a lot of things Billy could do if the world wasn’t hellbent on making him suffer the consequences.

 

 

 **XX.**  
One night, after Stevie’s done work at the pool, they don’t go straight to her place.

Instead, they go get ice cream. Billy buys Stevie ice cream even though she’s not his girlfriend, and she probably gets more money in her weekly allowance than Billy has ever had in his bank account. But when she gets ice cream on her fingers she lets Billy lick it off, so it’s kind of worth it.

They drive around for a bit. The roads are mostly empty, long stretches of flat, straight pavement that seem to go on forever at night. Seemingly slick with the darkness. It’s nearly 9PM when Billy’s is pulling over onto the side of the road, pulling his keys out of the ignition, and pulling Stevie towards him with hands on either of her thighs.

Billy eats Stevie out in his car. It’s almost like the night they first hooked up, almost like when he puts his fingers inside of Stevie in the bathroom. Only now he’s got his mouth on her so it’s even better. Billy laps and licks against Stevie’s clit, over and over until he can feel her legs shaking around him, and then he’s licking into her cunt. Slow, meticulous, like if Stevie let him he could just do this to her forever.

When he’s done he doesn’t even wipe his mouth before he kisses her. He touches her thighs, the overstimulated warmth between her legs, her hips, her stomach, her nipple. He tells her she’s sweet like those syrupy maraschino cherries. The kind they put on sundaes.

And then Stevie turns about as deep red as one of those cherries too.

**Author's Note:**

> Final part coming within the next week.


End file.
